Newspaper: Detroit Free Press
page: page 8, col. 1
date: April 29, 1955
subject: The Legal Status of Formosa (Taiwan)
quote:

It has been charged that Chiang Kai-shek has no claim to the island because he is "merely a fugitive quartering his army" there and besides, his is a government in exile.

(source: The Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 10, No. 2 (June 1957))

Enmeshed in a civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists for control of China, Chiang's government mostly ignored Taiwan until 1949, when the Communists won control of the mainland. That year, Chiang's Nationalists fled to Taiwan and established a government-in-exile.

While on October 1, 1949, in Beijing a victorious Mao proclaimed the creation of the People's Republic of China (PRC), Chiang Kai-shek re-established a temporary capital for his government in Taipei, Taiwan, declaring the ROC still to be the legitimate Chinese government-in-exile and vowing that he would "retake the mainland" and drive out communist forces.

Chiang Kai-shek wanted to fight it out on an all-or-nothing basis. There are also reports that Chiang's advisors convinced him that if the ROC mission stayed to represent Taiwan, Chiang would be under pressure to demonstrate in some constitutional way that his Chinese government-in-exile represented the people of Taiwan rather than the vast population of China. Doing so would require Chiang to dismantle his existing regime (which was elected in 1947 on the Chinese mainland and continued to rule in Taiwan under emergency martial law provisions without benefit of elections), adopt an entirely new constitution, and install an entirely new government.

After the war China established a garrison on Itu Aba, which the Chinese Nationalists maintained after their exile to Taiwan.

Chiang Kai-shek
born October 31, 1887, Chekiang province, China
died April 5, 1975, Taipei, Taiwan
soldier and statesman, head of the Nationalist government in China from 1928 to 1949, and subsequently head of the Chinese Nationalist government in exile on Taiwan.

p. 33 --
A Chinese title, under international law, cannot be deduced from the presence of the Chiang Kai-shek exile government on Taiwan.


p. 132 --
I am sure that the sponsors of the draft resolution...seeking to preserve a seat for the Formosa regime ... are aware of the controversy that is raging as to the representative character of the Government based on that island. My Government has been inundated with documents and petitions from people who claim to be Formosans, arguing that the so-called Republic of China in exile cannot claim to represent the people of Taiwan.


p. 133 --
The exiled nationalist Chinese regime does not represent the people of Formosa....


p. 166 --
According to Professor Gene Hsiao, since the San Francisco Peace Treaty and the separate KMT treaty with Japan did not specify to whom Japan was ceding Taiwan and the Pescadores, the implication of the U.S . position was that -- Legally, and insofar as the signatories of those two treaties were concerned, Taiwan became an "ownerless" island and the KMT, by its own assent to the American policy, a foreign government-in-exile.